For the Sherlock Web solution I had a need to be able to update rich text content in a CKEditor with rich text content from backend document templates. These backend document templates can be created and edited with the Lotus Notes client and will in some cases contain rich text content of type Rich Text (and not MIME). I can not change these backend document templates to be stored as MIME, so in order to be able to update the rich text content in a CKEditor, I thought I had to wrestle with conversion of Rich Text to MIME.

I spent a lot of time getting Rich Text to MIME conversion to work in order to add the backend document templates to the rich text content in the CKEditor. I ended up with a clumsy solution that involved saving the XPages backend document in order for the updated content to appear. I had a lot of inspiration from the answers to this Stack Overflow question on appending and prepending text to a rich text field. It worked, but…

A couple of good XPages guys suggested I took a look at using the datasource getValue() and setValue() methods instead. This turned out to be right way to go.

Part of trick is that I use the wrapDocument() function from XSnippet  to get a NotesXspDocument representation of the backend document template. I can then just use getValue(“body”) on that NotesXspDocument followed by getHTML() to get a HTML representation of the content. Brilliant!

The setValue method on the inputRichText control expects MIME and not text, so I use an XPages supplied method that converts from HTML to MIME. This is necessary in order to save the document at all.

So here is the important part of my code that reads content from the target field and updates it with a backend document field contaning Notes Rich Text, and ends up saving it as MIME:

if (templateDoc != null) {
   // Insert contents into existing field
   if (templateDoc.hasItem("body")) {
      var orgValue = document.getValue(bodyFieldName);
      var origValue;
      if (orgValue != null) {
         // The target field already has content
         origValue = ((typeof orgValue == "string")? orgValue : orgValue.getHTML()) + "";
      } else {
         // The target field is empty
         origValue = "";
      }

      var templateField = wrapDocument(templateDoc).getValue("body");
      importPackage(com.ibm.xsp.http);
      document.setValue(bodyFieldName, com.ibm.xsp.http.MimeMultipart.fromHTML(origValue + templateField.getHTML()));
   }
}

I also used an answer from Sven Hasselbach on partially refreshing contents in a CKEditor to put my inputRichText control inside a div control in order to partially refresh the div control when the above logic runs.

Using this method I am completely rid of the need to save the backend document. This just works! 🙂

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I have added the part about updating the inputRichText control with MIME to the OpenNTF XSnippets catalog.

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Notice: this code snippet does not work with embedded images and attachments.

Update October 2013: Here’s my solution for adding embedded images.

Stack Overflow is a programming Q&A site for developers with more than 3.5 million questions and even more anwers on every programming language you can image.

On Stack Overflow you can also find questions and answers related to XPages. At the time of writing this blog post there are 597 questions tagged XPages on Stack Overflow with questions and answers coming in every day. If you have a question on XPages then have a look at some of the already asked questions and  their answers and see if that helps you. If not, then go ahead and ask a question.

I will also encourage you to help the community by answering questions and also upvoting great answers and downvoting misleading answers. This will improve the quality of Stack Overflow as a Q&A site for XPages.

XPages.info always lists the latest questions tagged XPages and also the top users for the XPages tag on the Stack Overflow tab.

I often hear people new to XPages ask: what resources are available if you want to learn XPages?

The following lists (some of the) available resources if you want to learn XPages.

IBM provided resources

• Direct help in Domino Designer using Help – Help Contents and hitting F1 – also available as an IBM Information Center. It includes a tutorial on creating an XPages application, a section on designing XPages applications, and a XPages reference guide.
• Lotus Notes and Domino Application Development wiki (including community articles such as Getting Started with XPages, Tutorial: Introduction to XPages, a whole section with tutorial articles and much more)
• The Notes Domino Application Development wiki
• Redbooks wiki: Building Domino Web Applications using Domino 8.5.1
• Redbooks wiki: Lotus Domino Development Best Practices

Books

• IBM Press: Mastering XPages: A Step-by-Step Guide to XPages Application Development and the XSP Language
• IBM Press: XPages Portable Command Guide: A Compact Resource to XPages Application Development and the XSP Language
• IBM Press: XPages Extension Library: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Next Generation of XPages Components (to be released in May 2012)

Free community provided resources

• XPages.info: lots of links to useful resources
• XPageswiki.com
• XPages.TV:  Notes In 9 videos, 2 hours of XPages jumpstart, and a introduction to Java for XPages develovers series
• XPagescheatsheet.com: home of the original XPages cheatsheet and the new Social Tools cheatsheet

Free courses

• TLCC: Using Lotus Domino Designer 8.5
• TLCC: Introduction to XPages development

Paid courses

• IBM.com Notes/Domino courses
• XPages 101 video training and XPages 201 classroom training
• TLCC developer courses
• Instructor led courses by various instructors such as myself

Community provided support

• Lotus Notes/Domino XPages development forum
• Stack Overflow on XPages